Whimsy Me

I wanted to blog about a million different things tonight, so I decided to blog about all of them and not have them make any sense. Because that's just the kind of whimsical mood I'm in this evening.

1. Every once in a while, there is a strange, howling animal wandering my street. It usually makes this sickening, yelping, howl-like sound about once every 15-20 min. and this will go on for at least 3 hours. All it does is remind me that I don't live in the country because howling animals are not really found in New York City. Me-thinks it is a beagle...baying.

2. Sometimes, I think the girl upstairs is a salsa instructor. Because she listens to salsa music very loudly and there are lots of frenetic fancy footwork sounds. I think she is saying: 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, dance with me, dance with me! I swear. But I've never really heard her say it.

3. I've decided, the only way I'm going to get a dog is if:
a. one follows me home.
b. someone gives one to me.
So, I'm begging someone to please give me one.

4. After realizing I left my USB key at work, which had the latest 4 pages of my novel on it, I couldn't move forward because I couldn't remember the last thing I wrote. So I did some chapter summarizing instead, which I found to be a really useful exercise. I wanted each chapter summary to be nice and tidy and I realized I was missing a lot of important things that would tie the chapter together nicely. I also figured out my main character's entire relationship with her father and it hadn't hit me before. It also helped me realize what I was trying to do with each chapter. Which...is a good thing. Obviously.

5. When I saw Jhumpa Lahiri, I was very happy when she told me that it took her 200 pages to figure out what was really going on in her novel. Phew. That's a relief.

6. I wonder how many pages it takes her to figure out a blog post. Because that would be a nice guideline for me right now.